Board of Visitors minutes :: October 7, 1966 :: University of Virginia Library

The President reported that Mrs. Signe M. Olsson has created a trust fund which will enable the University to establish the Elis and Signe Olsson Professorship in Business Administration to be dedicated to the development of high concepts of integrity and ethical conduct in public life. The income from the trust fund is to be received by the University for twenty years, but the donor has asked that an amount be deducted from the income each year in order that, at the end of twenty years, the capital fund will be sufficient to continue the Professorship.

The donor has in mind the enormous importance of integrity in human affairs and seeks through this gift to stimulate general public interest in and understanding of the ethical implications that necessarily adhere to the exercise of authority in both private and public life. The occupant of the Elis and Signe Olsson Professorship, therefore, through teaching, research, and publication, will endeavor to enhance public awareness that actions of men in responsible positions in public and private life are influenced in differing degrees by a belief in right and wrong, by the dictates of individual conscience, and by the anticipated moral and social consequences of their actions. The intention of the donor is that the activities generated by the Elis and Signe Olsson Professorship shall aim at attaining a position of leadership, in the academic world and elsewhere, in efforts to improve standards of behavior in both public and private business.

In particular, therefore, the Professorship in its activities will emphasize the essentiality of integrity in the reconciliation of those concepts commonly indicated as the dignity of the individual, the imperatives of organizations, and the moralities implicit in free markets.

The following resolution was therefore adopted:

RESOLVED by the Board of Visitors of The Rector and Visitors of the University of Virginia that the Elis and Signe Olsson Professorship in Business Administration be and it is hereby established in the Graduate School of Business Administration;
BE IT RESOLVED further that this Professorship shall be dedicated to high concepts of integrity and ethical conduct in public and private life; and
BE IT RESOLVED further, whereas it is the wish of the donors of the funds supporting the Elis and Signe Olsson Professorship in Business Administration during the twenty-year period from 1966 to 1986 when the income of the trust heretofore established by Mrs. Signe Maria Olsson is being paid to the University of Virginia for the support of the Olsson Professorship, that annually a sufficient portion of the income shall be set aside and retained by the University of Virginia in order that by 1986 a capital fund will have been created in an amount, the income of which will be sufficient to maintain the Olsson Professorship after the trust established by Mrs. Olsson ceases to support that Professorship in 1986.

The following resolution was also adopted:

WHEREAS the members of the Board have learned with special pleasure of the generous gift of Mrs. Olsson for the establishment of the Elis and Signe Olsson Professorship in Business Administration; and
WHEREAS the generosity of the donor in this instance is especially gratifying as a mark of the continuing relationship between the Olsson family and the University of Virginia;
NOW THEREFORE BE IT RESOLVED by the Rector and Visitors of the University of Virginia that we hereby record our deep gratitude for this gift and direct the Secretary to transmit a copy of this resolution to the donor as a mark of our warm appreciation.